Vitamin Marketer Uses SEO, Events and Message Boards

Back in 1999, Cincinnati entrepreneur Al Alexander ran the Paramount fitness center, where he also sold vitamins on the side. But he started receiving customer complaints that they could buy the products elsewhere for cheaper prices.

That led Alexander in 2001 to open Supplements To Go (www.supplementstogo.com), a Web site that sells about 5,000 products ranging from nutritional and bodybuilding supplements to calcium, digestive enzymes and antioxidants.

Within the past two years, the less-than $10 million a year company moved to Phoenix, AZ, and acquired two other online supplement retailers.

Alexander markets the site principally through search engine marketing and sponsorships of events like the Ultimate Fighting Championships and the Ms. Fitness and Ms Fitness World contests, which are taking place at this moment in Las Vegas, says Alexander.

The company relies on about 10,000 keywords.

“When you start thinking about the supplement industry, you find there are hundreds of variations just off the word supplement, like ‘buy supplements,’ ‘discount supplements,’ ‘save on supplements,’ ‘body building supplements’ and ‘ nutritional supplements,'” he says. “So each word creates a whole new set of words.”

Supplements To Go buys keywords on Google, Yahoo and MSN and has some success with organic listings. For example, the keywords “bodybuilding supplements” were listed at No. 6 on the unpaid Google listings this week.

“The more focused words like those of individual product names do the best for us,” Alexander says.

The 10-employee company, which just shipped its 300,000th order, also tries to develop customers by hosting message boards. Here, users can get tips from personal trainers, obtain information about different product, share their stories and receive other feedback.

“We’re trying to build a community,” he says, noting the company is looking into hosting customer videos on the Web site as well.